NIGERIA AND THE TUBERCULOSIS BURDEN
The authorities should invest more to contain this health emergency
The World TB Day 2024 held yesterday with the theme, ‘Yes! We can end TB!’. While some critical stakeholders marked the day by reminding Nigerians of the disease burden, health authorities did not show sufficient concern about Tuberculosis, better known by its acronym TB, even when it still constitutes a major health problem in the country. Indeed, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has consistently ranked Nigeria among countries with one of the highest prevalence of TB in the world. The National Tuberculosis and Leprosy Control Programme (NTBLCP) National Coordinator, Laraban Shehu, revealed last week that “in Nigeria, every five minutes, one person dies of TB.” Shehu added that fatalities from the disease are far higher than the number of people who die from some other diseases. “And the regrettable thing is that this is a disease that is curable and can be prevented.”
The TB statistics are chilling. Nigeria accounts for 23 per cent of TB deaths in Africa, according to a recent report by the NTBLCP. Meanwhile, undetected TB carriers in the country are capable of infecting between 12 per cent and 15 per cent of the population annually. The WHO National Programme Officer for TB, Amos Omoniyi, said last week that Nigeria carries the sixth highest burden of the disease with 97,000 death cases, amounting to about 2.4 million deaths in the African region. “There have been persistent challenges in fighting this disease, and it includes insufficient funding, which is the 70 per cent funding gap, resources, low treatment coverage, and limited access to diagnostic tools,” Omoniyi lamented. “Therefore, we are calling on the governments, civil society organisations, and international partners to increase their support and to address these barriers and enhance TB control efforts.”
Globally, some 13 per cent of TB patients are also afflicted with HIV and said to be the leading cause of death among people living with HIV. But tuberculosis is a curable disease. That, of course, depends on early detection and correct diagnosis aided with proper treatment. The challenge in Nigeria is that patients afflicted with TB do not complete the therapy and even worse, many do not make themselves available for treatment. Indeed, failure to complete the treatment and the mismanagement of drugs account for the death of many patients and the increase in variants of the disease that are drug resistant in the country. Nigeria has the second highest multi-drug resistance tuberculosis (MDR-TB) burden in Africa and the 13th highest in the world.
Tuberculosis is perhaps the single leading cause of death from any single infectious agent. It is caused by a bacterium which most commonly affects the lungs and transmitted from person to person through air droplets. TB affects all species of vertebrates and though control measures had reportedly limited the spread through animals, they (particularly cattle) still constitute a significant source of risk in countries like Nigeria where meat and milk inspection by health officials are often overlooked.
The world health body is particularly worried because a substantial number of the people infected in Nigeria are unreported or undiagnosed. By WHO statistics, no fewer than 15 per cent of the three million people undiagnosed for TB around the world are in Nigeria, most of them women and children in slum neighbourhoods where poor ventilation and squalor abet the spread of the disease. To end the scourge, there is an urgent need for the federal government to support the local manufacturing of TB drugs and there must be enlightenment campaign on preventive measures. Health authorities like National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) must also work to halt the proliferation of fake and adulterated drugs that compound the problem of TB in the country.